The present invention relates to a bill receiving and dispensing machine and more particularly to a circulation-type bill receiving and dispensing machine adapted to reuse received bills as bills for dispensation and having a set of a bill receiving and a bill dispensing port at one side (e.g. the teller's side) and an operating section at the other side (e.g. the customer's side) of the machine body.
Bill receiving and dispensing machines have been used in banks where they are loaded with bills for dispensation before the start of transactions. In such a case, it is preferable to have a minimum amount of previously loaded bills so as to improve the money circulation efficiency. Thus, there has been recently developed a circulation-type bill receiving and dispensing machine which can reuse the received bills as bills for dispensation.
In a conventional bill receiving and dispensing machine, a set of a bill receiving and a bill dispensing port and an operation section is arranged only at one side of the machine body and thus exchange of bills between a teller and a customer must be done over the counter of the bank. This is very troublesome and also lowers the efficiency of the banking operation.
For avoiding these problems, there has been developed a bill receiving and dispensing machine which is provided with a set of a bill receiving and a bill dispensing port and an operating section at both the front side (e.g. teller's side) and the rear side (e.g. customer's side) and which is able to carry out the bill receiving and dispensing operations from both the front and rear sides of the machine body.
Such a bill receiving and dispensing machine having a set of a bill receiving and a bill dispensing port and an operating section on both sides (e.g. the teller's side and the customer's side) is disclosed, for example, in Japanese laid-open patent publications Nos. 27385/1984, 54097/1979 and 209591/1982.
The bill receiving and dispensing machine disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 27385/1984 has a bill receiving and dispensing port, an operating section and a bill transferring route communicating with the bill receiving and dispensing port which are arranged at one side of the machine body and a bill receiving and dispensing port and an operating section arranged at the other side of the machine body. In this bill receiving and dispensing machine, a discriminating section, a bill containing section and a bill temporary pooling section are commonly used for bill withdrawal operations carried out via the bill receiving and dispensing ports at the two sides.
The machine disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 54097/1979 relates to a transaction machine to be arranged at a teller's window and the machine disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 209591/1982 relates to an automatic bill receiving and dispensing machine wherein a set of a bill receiving and a bill dispensing port and an operating section is arranged at both front and rear sides of the machine body. However, similarly to the machine disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 27385/1984, this machine is also designed that only one discriminating section is commonly used for bill transaction operations carried out by both the bill receiving and dispensing ports.
In many cases the bill receiving and dispensing machine is simultaneously operated by a customer at one side and by a teller at the other side. However, according to the machines of the prior art, it is impossible to simultaneously carry out bill receiving or dispensing operations at the customer side and the teller side, since the bill receiving and dispensing machines of the prior art are so designed that they have a single bill discriminating section to be commonly used for bill dealing operations at the customer side and the teller side and therefore the bill discriminating section is occupied during bill transaction operations at either side. Accordingly, a customer cannot withdraw bills while the machine is being operated in the bill receiving mode by a teller and thus the customers must wait until the operation at the teller side is completed.